Columnist Jon Ralston: Some taxing questions to ask

Friday, Jan. 23, 2004 | 5:05 a.m.

Jon Ralston hosts the news discussion program Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE and publishes the Ralston Report. He can be reached at (702) 870-7997 or at ralston@vegas.com.

WEEKEND EDITION

January 24 - 25, 2004

PRETTY SOON now, if it hasn't happened already, a knock will come to your door.

The would-be home invader will be a candidate for the Legislature, the place where depredations are indiscriminate and reputations are undistinguished. I know your instincts: Slam the door before they plunder your house.

But today I plead with you to resist that impulse. This is the time of the campaign season -- the beginning -- when I still have hope. So before it mutates into despair, allow me to ask voters to show what so many lawmakers and candidates, alas, will not: Common sense and forthrightness.

Never has a legislative campaign season seemed so important, especially with the federal races so soporific and the stakes so immense. The struggle for control of the Legislature is nothing short of a battle for supremacy between two parties suffering from severe psychological maladies. The Republicans are schizophrenic, with some of them of the paranoid variety. And the Democrats are suffering from a miraculous absence of personality commitment, the ghosts within a party machine.

I waited all session -- and then through two special sessions -- last year for The Great Tax and Spending Debate. But with the Republicans split and the Democrats scared, it never happened. This time, to quote John Kerry: Bring it on.

And it's up to the voters to make it happen because a poor pundit can only screech, Howard Dean-like, so much. The media will hyperventilate over individual contests, especially Ray Rawson-Bob Beers and Chad Christensen-Justin Jones. But the story will go beyond whether Christensen and Beers are captive to big business interests or whether Rawson and Jones are wholly owned subsidiaries of the Las Vegas Strip.

Those will be telling crucibles. But the real issue for voters to discern in Campaign '04 is whether the Democrats, who have come off as cowering cowards, will stand up for what they believe in even if it might be less than popular and explain why they supported virtually every tax increase that was proposed last year. They were like lemmings on virtually every tax vote, voting in lockstep with their leaders -- and it became unclear whether that was the powerful lobbying crowd.

And, as a corollary, will the Republicans who opposed the largest tax increase in history be held accountable, since nearly all of them supported slightly smaller tax increases that still would have been record-setting? Even Beers said on "Face to Face" during the session he supported cutting $400 million from the governor's budget, which would have been a $600 million tax increase, and by the end many of those putatively fearless assemblymen were begging for a deal at $704 million and even higher.

I'm sick of hearing the insipid, hackneyed "We did it for the kids" folderol from the Democrats just as I am repelled by the "We have to make government run more like a business" jabberwocky we get from the Republicans.

Bromides are not solutions. Yet, these folks count on your ignorance, your lack of knowledge. But that's where I aim to be helpful. Clip this list of questions for any legislative candidate who comes a courting:

1. Do you support repealing the $836 million tax increase? Please answer yes or no. If yes, explain exactly what would you replace it with and/or a specific list of cuts. If no, please explain why, with specific emphasis on how you defend a payroll tax, bizarre bank location tax, real estate transfer taxes and huge increases in sin taxes?

2. Do you see any specific areas of state government that could be erased? How much money would that save us? Will you commit to me today that you will introduce a bill with those cuts?

3. Do you believe the gaming industry is paying enough in taxes? Please answer yes or no. If yes, please explain why you believe that. If no, how much do you propose -- and be specific -- that we raise casino taxes?

4. Do you believe that big business is paying enough in taxes? Please answer yes or no. If yes, please explain why you believe that. If no, how much do you propose -- and be specific -- that we raise business taxes and how?

5. The state consistently ranks near the bottom in how much it spends on education, health care and social services. Are you OK with that and if so, why? If not, what do you propose to do? Be specific and tell me how much it will cost and how you will pay for it.

6. The state has built the current budget on a house of cards, with an estimated $200 million or so in federal money and one-shot funds. How do you propose to replace that revenue? Please don't tell me you think the rebounding economy will take care of it. Or, if you don't want to raise taxes, where do you propose to cut to make up for that money?

I could think of more, but those are the salient ones. If you don't ask those questions, though, you have no right to complain about taxing or spending decisions next time.

The only creature more offensive by the end of the campaign season than a dodging politician whining about media coverage is a benighted voter wailing about negative campaigning.